Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Thanks Tony.
Category: movies
GASLAND – the film
GASLAND – (2010) Directed by Josh Fox. Winner of Special Jury Prize – Best US Documentary Feature – Sundance 2010.
… what comes out of the ground with that natural gas?How does it affect our air and drinking water?
GASLAND is a powerful personal documentary that confronts these questions with spirit, strength, and a sense of humor. When filmmaker Josh Fox receives his cash offer in the mail, he travels across 32 states to meet other rural residents on the front lines of fracking. He discovers toxic streams, ruined aquifers, dying livestock, brutal illnesses, and kitchen sinks that burst into flame.
He learns that all water is connected and perhaps some things are more valuable than money. …
Click PLAY or watch a trailer on YouTube.
Gasland currently holds a 97% rating on the film site Rotten Tomatoes based on 37 reviews. …
World War Z | White House Down | Superman
I rarely see first run movies in the cinema. Especially Hollywood summer blockbusters.
But somehow I saw these three current hits.
TOP 5 USA Friday June 28, 2013:
1. The Heat (Fox) NEW [Runs 3,181] R
Estimated Friday $13M-$16M, Est Weekend $35M-$30M2. Monsters University 3D (Pixar/Disney) Week 2 [Runs 4,004] G
Estimated Friday $13M-$16M, Est Weekend $45M-$55M, Est Cume $170M-$180M3. World War Z 3D (Paramount) Week 2 [Runs 3,607] PG13
Estimated Friday $10M-$12M (-60%), Est Weekend $33M-$36M, Est Cume $127M-$130M4. White House Down (Sony) NEW [Runs 3,222]
Estimated Friday $9M-11M, Est Weekend $25M-$30M5. Man Of Steel 3D (:legendary/Warner Bros) Week 3 [Runs 4,131]
Estimated Friday $6M-$9M, Weekend $19M-$25M, Est Cume $247M-$232M
I enjoyed all three, plotless and absurd as they are. Jamie Foxx as President?
Best was World War Z. Brad Pitt works for me.
The zombie CGI are excellent. Actually, I saw it in 3D. Don’t bother. I can’t say the 3D improved the film.
I’m looking forward to the inevitable WW Z sequel(s). And will likely get the book, which I hear is far better.
America’s idiotic War on Drugs
The House I Live In, directed by Eugene Jarecki, is a 2012 documentary film about the War on Drugs in the United States.
The documentary has been well received. Among the review aggregators, Rotten Tomatoes gave it 95% based on 55 reviews …
Click PLAY or watch the trailer on YouTube.
In the USA you can watch it on YouTube for free.
Here are some other places you can get it.
The Wire on HBO really got me thinking about this issue again. I’m wondering if there are any more expensive, less effective strategies than that used by the U.S. government.
Must be … But I can’t think how.
Dan and Audrey. RTW travel.
Warren recommended a travel blog called Uncornered Market.
Check a sample – South Africa: From in the Books to on the Ground
Daniel Noll & Audrey Scott are the husband-and-wife storytelling and photography team behind Uncornered Market. They travel deep and off-beat, aiming to connect the world through people, food and adventure. Six years and 75 countries later, they are still going…and still married …
I’m looking at a couple of future Round The World trips right now.
A Good Day to Die Hard
Exactly what I expected. Awesome special effects, crappy plot.
The camera work is mostly handheld, jarring at times.
… Based on 189 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, the film received a 15% approval rating from critics …
… A.O. Scott of The New York Times described A Good Day to Die Hard as “a handful of extended set pieces — each more elaborate and therefore somehow less exciting than the last — linked by a simple-minded plot and a handful of half-clever lines. …
That’s true. But the first car chase scene can stand with the best ever filmed, no matter how unrealistic.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
A Good Day to Die Hard made a ton of money.
There will be one more in the franchise. At least.
Life of Pi
Great book.
And a remarkably skillful film adaption by Ang Lee.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave Life of Pi 4 out of 4 stars, referring to it as “a miraculous achievement of storytelling and a landmark of visual mastery” as well as “one of the best films of the year.” He particularly praised the film’s use of 3D that he described as “deepen[ing] the film’s sense of places and events.”
I was enthralled the entire time. The CGI didn’t bother me even once.
Hoping to see it again, but next time in 3D. 🙂
District 9
I really liked this oddball film.
… the setting of District 9 is inspired by historical events that took place in South Africa during the apartheid era, with the film’s title particularly alluding to District Six.
District Six, an inner-city residential area in Cape Town, was declared a “whites only” area by the government in 1966, with 60,000 people forcibly removed and relocated to Cape Flats, 25 km (15 mi) away. …
Sony Pictures launched a “Humans Only” marketing campaign to promote District 9. Sony’s marketing team designed its promotional material to emulate the segregational billboards that appear throughout the film. …
The film received very positive reviews, with Rotten Tomatoes reporting that 91% of critics gave the film a positive review …
The film received four Academy Awards nominations … It was also the first mockumentary style film to be nominated for Best Picture. …
Click PLAY or watch a trailer on YouTube.
Bill Murray as FDR
I love everything Bill Murray. Predictably, I smiled all the way through this romp.
Hyde Park on Hudson is a 2012 British biographical comedy-drama film directed by Roger Michell. The film stars Bill Murray and Laura Linney as Franklin D. Roosevelt and Margaret (Daisy) Suckley, respectively. It was based on Suckley’s private journals and diaries, discovered after her death, about her love affair with and intimate details about President Franklin D. Roosevelt. …
In June 1939, King George VI and his wife, Queen Elizabeth, made a visit to the United States, during which they stayed at President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s country estate in Hyde Park, New York. …
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Though Rotten Tomatoes ranks it rank — 37% — Bill Murray was nominated for a Golden Globe.
Olivia Williams as Eleanor Roosevelt was my favourite character.
“Nollywood” – Black November
by Nigerian filmmaker, Jeta Amata.
… “Black November” is a drama about Nigeria’s Niger-Delta region. The film is weighing into the 50-year history of western exploitation of the region’s oil resources, local collusion and violent resistance to it.
Nigeria’s Niger Delta region is the world’s third largest wetland but decades of oil drilling have turned it into one of the most oil-polluted places on earth. …
… The film has a cast that include Mickey Rourke, Kim Bassinger, Hakeem Kae-Kazim and Enyinna Nwigwe.
It also features Mbong Amata, Jeta’s wife; his father, Zack and his uncle, Fred. …
Click PLAY or watch a trailer on YouTube.
official website of the film
… The cinema of Nigeria grew quickly in the 1990s and 2000s to become the second largest film industry in the world in terms of number of annual film productions, placing it ahead of the United States and behind the Indian film industry.
… The average film costs between US$17,000 and US$23,000, is shot on video in just a week—selling up to 150,000–200,000 units nationwide in one day. …
… about “1,200 films are produced in Nigeria annually.” And more and more filmmakers are heading to Nigeria because of “competitive distribution system and a cheap workforce.”
